The guesthouse at Excelsior, Robertson

We had been invited to come and visit Excelsior farm and stay in the guest house. The Wine on the River festival presented the perfect time to do so and we arrived on Sunday and stayed till Tuesday, enabling us to visit more farms and taste more wines in the Valley. Carin Visser runs the Guest House like a four star hotel. It is a beautiful spacious old house, in the Cape Dutch Revival style, circa 1900 and Peter de Wet told us it was an Ostrich Palace.  The 9 rooms are spacious, with wooden floors, high ceilings and teak multi-paned windows and all are en suite.  The beds are huge and have lovely crisp linen.  We had dinner on our first night, the food is, to quote them: “ a set three course menu which changes daily taking advantage of what is in season. We offer lovingly prepared, home cooked "farm food". Excelsior wines are included with dinner. The serving staff were really impressive, especially James who is the house butler. And Carin made us very welcome and comfortable throughout our stay

Breakfast on both mornings was very good, especially on Tuesday when the weather allowed us all  to breakfast on the terrace by the pool overlooking the spring vineyards where we could watch staff training and suckering the new vigorous vines. Check them out at guesthouse@excelsior.co.za. They offer intimate Wedding, Honeymoon and Golf packages as well as conference packages.

Always nice to be welcomed by a friendly hound. This is Mango, who helps to herd the guests and loves being taken on long walks.

The verandah of the Guest house is a lovely place to relax

An antique walnut bureau in the entrance hall echoes the grand proportions and history of the house

The lounge

Another view from the adjoining room

Trophies of past achievements

The hallway leading to the rooms. All the rooms are named after horses Excelsior has won races with or owned

They gave us the honeymoon suite and very large and comfortable it is

A slipper bath and a shower in the bathroom

The view looking back down the hall. The style of the house is rather like ours, which is just 20 years younger

Another of the bedrooms. All are en suite

And another with twin beds

Yet another

This was Kyla our constant companion, especially at meals!

Carin Visser in the dining room getting ready for dinner

 Butler James pouring us wine. He was very accomplished and charming

Guests from Johannesburg, who had really enjoyed themselves at the festival and can't wait to come back next year

The starter was a thick vegetable soup

You could drink any or all of these Excelsior wines with supper and they are included in the price

The main course was roast chicken with a tikka masala sauce, mixed vegetables and rice

Carin checking to see if everyone is all right

Dessert was a rich but light cheesecake

Breakfast the next morning

The breakfast buffet

had lots of choices

You can have the eggs and bacon and sausages and tomatoes, served in a very novel way. The smoked bacon was delicious. This was the breakfast we had on the pool deck

which has wonderful views of the vineyards looking towards De Wetshof

Workers tying in and suckering the spring vines

Eggs and bacon for Lynne and a cheese and bacon omelette for John, with good black coffee and orange juice

The omelette

A quiet place to relax

The farm has roses everywhere. This is a formal rose garden

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014

Blaauwklippen Blending Competition winners' lunch

There was a huge surprise this year at this annual blending competition which is open for entry to all South African wine clubs. Who won? Well in the greatest coincidence (which has never happened before), six wine clubs all managed independently to get the same winning blend. So they were all there for the fun award ceremony at Blaauwklippen in Stellenbosch this week.  We had a meat and cheese platter lunch prepared by Steve Jeffery during which the awards were announced and we got to meet many of the winners. The winning wine was served to us with lunch. Click here to see the list of winners

Cellarmaster and GM Rolf Zeitvogel and Natalie Campbell of Blaauwklippen warmly welcome us

Filo parcels of spinach and feta

Pinwheels of rolled mozzarella and smoked meat

Beautiful Blaauwklippen

We all assembled in the garden with glasses of their Sparkle to refresh us

Rolf welcomes us and tells us about the awards to come and about the new tasting room

The old barrel cellar. These enormous barrels hold a lot of red wine

Opening the ceremony

We had speeches from all the finalists. This is Andre du Plessis

George Holmes

Steve Jeffery of The Charcuterie is now doing the food in the tasting room at Blaauwklippen and for the awards lunch

Anita Swart reads out her introduction

Estie Terblanche

Our lunch platter of cheese and charcuterie, olives rocket and a rather good mini quiche

Winemaker and judge Albert Basson, who had to make all the blends entered for the judges

We are introduced to the new label for the blend. This is the 31st annual competition they have held

And the trophy this year goes to... six different clubs who all made the same blend. There were three clubs hailing from Pretoria, namely Wine 101, Baronne Wynklub, and Vaal Ja-Pe Wynproe Groep , the Versapper from Centurion, Weskus Wyngilde from Vredenburg and last, but not least, Oude Molen Wynkring from Potchefstroom.

Prizes for the winners included wine from Blaauwklippen, glasses from Vitria and a weekend at the Protea Hotel Stellenbosch, both sponsors

The dessert table

For 2014 the clubs were tasked to create a consumer friendly, every day, easy-drinking, juicy, modern red blend, consisting of the following wines, Cabernet Franc 2012, Malbec 2013, Shiraz 2013 and Zinfandel 2013. A minimum of three of the four base wines had to be used in the final blend, and Zinfandel and Cabernet Franc had to be included in restricted quantities in the recipe.

After the clubs had determined the ideal percentage of blending components to create their final wine, the blends were tasted by a panel of wine judges to determine the finalists. Six wines stood out with exactly the same blend, 30% Zinfandel, 20% Malbec, 15% Cabernet Franc and 35% Shiraz, which created a playful, yet elegant red wine.  This is the wine, bottled in magnums with its new label

Receiving the trophy which will be shared

The winners with the trophy

Rolf with the girls from East London

Rolf with the judges: Cape Wine Master Clive Torr, Karen Glanfield Pawley and winemaker Albert Basson

Rolf with the well known label designer Frans Groenewald, who has done many of these labels for Blaauwklippen and other wine farms

It will hang in the hallway with the others

A view of the new tasting room

They also sell very good chocolate

The comfortable brandy lounge

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© John & Lynne Ford, Adamastor & Bacchus 2014